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This year, I turn 50. Half a freakin’ century. I’m older than ATMs, GPS and Prozac. Beauty editors love to give older women advice about what they should and shouldn’t wear, like it’s any of their $&%$ing business.

But, they have the right idea. After living on this crazy planet for five decades, there are definitely things I’m going to stop wearing once I turn 50. Maybe even sooner.

A fake smile. Sometimes I get pissed off. Sometimes I’m frustrated Sometimes I even concentrate really hard. I refuse to wear a smile just so the people around me don’t have to think of me as a human being with actual emotions besides extreme happiness. #DoNotTellMeToSmile

(Why isn’t this woman smiling?!?!?! Oh, right. She doesn’t have to.)

A fitness tracker. Either I’m moving, or I’m not. I don’t need an expensive gadget on my wrist jolting me into action every hour. And I refuse to do laps around my house at 11:30 p.m. trying to get my steps in for the day. #NotDoingIt

Others’ expectations. Haven’t we spent enough time trying to keep other people happy? I feel like now’s a good time to follow my own heart. It’s funny, but when you start living your own truth, other people’s opinions don’t carry nearly the same weight. And speaking of weight . . .

Big tote bags. I’ve carried enough baggage for the first 50 years of my life, I’m not about to keep carrying handbags just so I can drag half of my beauty products around with me. Letting the weight lift of my shoulders (literally and figuratively) helps me stand straighter, lift my gaze and face the world straight on. #DropTheBaggage

January is #1 on my list of Top 10 Months I Hate. Once Christmas is cleaned up and the work holidays are over, there’s no reason to put up with January’s cold, blizzardy, moody attitude. It’s Mother Nature’s version of PMS.

Because my boss insists I show up EVERY workday this month, I can’t just hibernate in pajama pants and watch Netflix. I have to prioritize my list of January crappiness to make sure I avoid the very worst parts of the month. Here are the Top 5 Things to Avoid in January.

1. Going Outside. Not cool. Okay, it’s VERY cool, but not in a cool way. I walk my dog before and after work (he works from 9 to 5) and it’s dark, it’s miserable, it’s snowy and it’s soggy. And did I mention it’s cold? I wear so many layers I was once photographed and put on the cover of Yeti magazine.

(Just me. Walking in a Winter Wonderland from Hell.)

2. Driving. I’ve been driving in the snow since Ford introduced the Edsel. But if you’re not comfortable driving in the snow, don’t get on the freeway! That is not the place to practice snow driving. If you’re from a state that shuts down during a spring rain, don’t get in your car at all until April.

3. The Air. Salt Lake has some of the worst air in the country. Go, Utah! Each winter, a choking, germy, evil cloak of smog settles into homes and lungs, only lifting when the annual winter virgin sacrifice is offered to our heathen gods. I’ve never been chosen for the virgin sacrifice. #Biased

4. Skiers. These snow-enthusiasts are the most horrible creatures on the planet. If you grew up too poor to ski, you developed an innate prejudice against all the wealthy skiers who hit the slopes each winter to slide down the mountains on a pair of toothpicks. Plus, you have to listen to how much fun they had on their ski trips when you only spent your weekend crying into a hot water bottle.

(He’s having the time of his life! And you’ll hear about it for three months.)

5. Darkness. If I wanted to live in a bleak, dark world of sadness and despair, I’d move to Washington, D.C.. In Utah, the sun rises around 11:30 a.m. then hangs around the sky like a petulant teenager before slamming the bedroom door and going to bed at 4 p.m. Even with the sun “shining”, the Stephen King fog (see #3) hovers like a vulture just waiting for us to drop dead from asphyxiation. So there’s that.

Unless you like driving in the snowy, cold, dark, poisonous wasteland of winter, avoid Salt Lake until June. If you’re a skier, take up chess.

Like this:

In less than three weeks, it will be Halloween. You’re running out of time to plan an unforgettable, totally unique Halloween party that will set you apart from all the boring sugar cookie decorating and pumpkin carving celebrations.

Please. You’re better than that.

If you’re having a hard time coming up with a unique theme for your Halloween Hullabaloo, I’ve done all the thinking for you.*

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: This terrifying moral tale was meant to teach kids to avoid gluttony, greed, pride, sloth, etc. As young Charlie Bucket watches his fellow factory adventurers fall in the traps of the insane chocolatier, Willy Wonka, we learn . . . ummm . . . candy is made from children?? Add creepy Oompa Loompas and you’ve got the makings of one cocoa-crazy party.

Sesame Street: Imaginary woolly mammoths, 10-foot birds running amok, green monsters jumping out of trash cans, a red furry creature screaming, “Hug me!”, a vampire count with no concept of personal space, creepy puppets just waiting for someone to shove a hand up their spine—just a normal day on Sesame Street. But a super creepy party theme.

Junior High School: Tap into those repressed fears of being clumsy, inadequate, sweaty, stupid, terrified, alone, mocked, left out and smelly. Turn your kitchen into a junior high lunch room, complete with a “cool-kids-only” table and extra sloppy sloppy Joe’s. Hand each child a pop history quiz and tell them they get no treats until they answer everything correctly. No cheating, dammit!

(Can’t you feel the terror??)

Hospital Waiting Room: Arrange uncomfortable chairs around the edges of the room. Toss in a few Popular Mechanics magazines from 1998 and a handful of STD pamphlets. Hang a broken clock on the wall. Hand party goers novel-length medical forms to fill out because the hospital has updated its medical records system again and needs all your information in triplicate. Have someone constantly sneeze without covering their nose/mouth.

Like this:

No one told me once I started practicing yoga, it would destroy my life. I wish someone had mentioned the potential side effects before I took my first class. But it’s done and I can’t reverse the process. It would be like trying to un-melt a s’more.

If you’ve considered starting a yoga practice, it’s only fair I warn you about what you might experience. I hope you’re more prepared than I was.

All the feels. It’s not that I was heartless, but once I took up yoga I became one of those people who get emotional about shit that never bothered me before. Like the planet and bumble bees and dolphins and other people*. Once you feel that connection, you don’t know how to stop it! It can be super annoying.

You can’t gossip. Again, I wasn’t a horrible human but I could be judgmental, unforgiving and even mean. Now I can’t imagine being hurtful toward another person*. In fact, I avoid drama altogether. So if you enjoy being a mean girl (or guy), yoga will wring that right out of you. Sorry.

You can’t enjoy food. You’ll begin to notice how soda makes your stomach hurt or how eating five dozen Oreo cookies leaves you lethargic. Pretty soon you’ll start avoiding those foods because you feel so much better when you don’t eat them. Even worse, you’ll eat foods like spinach and grapefruit and almonds and Greek yogurt. See! Yoga sucks.

You don’t give a shit what people think. As a card-carrying, lifetime membership people-pleaser, it was a tough adjustment to realize other peoples’ opinion of me don’t matter. Once I decided to take away their power to humiliate, shame or degrade me, I had to accept the fact that maybe they were wrong. Which leads us to . . .

You connect to yourself. One day you admit you’re not happy. You admit you treat yourself like garbage. You admit that all those years of negative self-talk have screwed you up. When you realize that, you have to do something about it. And that’s super hard. You have to learn how to accept your weaknesses without criticism, but also accept your worthiness without cynicism. Suddenly your default mode can’t be “skeptic” or “sarcastic.” It’s like re-learning how to walk.

So if that list of side effects doesn’t dissuade you from purchasing a yoga mat and walking into a class, you’re on your own. You’ve been warned.

Like this:

Congress is too worried about pissing off big medical, pharmaceutical and insurance companies to fix healthcare. Instead of curing a dying healthcare system, Congress sits on its chest slowly suffocating the life out of any reform.

Maybe our representatives don’t see the populace walking towards them with torches and pitchforks, but we’re coming. If those cut-off-from-reality SOBs don’t pull it together soon, the middle class will implode and heads will roll.

As much as I’d love to see our congressional “leaders” dragged through the streets like a United Airlines passenger, here’s another option: Fix the damn healthcare situation. A few places to start:

Bring down drug costs. Prez Trump is good at issuing ultimatums. Here’s a quote he can use. “Listen up, Pfizer and Bayer and Novartis! You either drop the price of your products or continue to live in greed and luxury!” Wait. I think he’s already used that quote.

Cover holistic practices. Massage, acupuncture and energy healing isn’t just a bunch of malarkey. But after being sick for three years, try to explain to an insurance carrier that holistic practices actually made you well. They look at you like you suggested bringing back polio and dodgeball.

Make medical lobbying illegal. Medical weasels should be banned from Washington, D.C. Yes, they drive nice cars and smear money around, but they also spread dis-ease and pestilence through their regular use of bribery and ass-kissing.

Cap medical costs. Costs are so out of control, you’d think hospitals were being run by a team of ego-driven chimpanzees. Three of my daughters have been hospitalized in the last year and owe a total of nearly $50,000–AFTER INSURANCE! That isn’t healthcare. That’s pad-our-wallet care.

Employers should embrace wellness programs. Including my commute, I spend at least 10 hours a day at my job. If you don’t think sitting on your ass all day makes you unhealthy then you are in denial, my friend. Great employers offer wellness activities DURING business hours. It will make employees happy and lower company insurance costs.

Congress needs to stop protecting the healthcare industry. Everyone knows that enabling someone only makes the situation worse. I don’t think our representatives will like how the voters conduct an intervention.

Like this:

Working for a government agency, and just living on planet Earth, I have suffered through PowerPoint presentations that could be listed as war crimes. Here are some tips on how to use PowerPoint in ways that don’t violate the Geneva Convention.

Don’t go over time. There’s nothing worse than to hear a long-winded speaker say, “I know my time is up, but I have a few more points to address.” Stop it. For God’s sake, stop talking.

Small wording. Unless you’re presenting at the Perfect Vision seminar, don’t use weird or super-small fonts. This only teaches people how to squint, get headaches and hate you.

(The text is too small and it’s about math. That’s what you call a double negative.)

Don’t over-complicate the info. Indecipherable charts, unrelated clip art and graph after graph after graph after graph. These techniques absolutely destroy someone’s will to live. Add in extra-twirly transactions and explosive slide changes, and you might as well be inserting bamboo under the listeners’ fingernails.

Don’t speak low and slow. As your voice ticks like a slow metronome, heavy and hypnotic, you realize your audience is gently snoring, dreaming of a PowerPoint free world.

Don’t read the slides. For the love of all that’s good! Don’t read the damn slides! Even if it’s just bullet points–don’t read verbatim. Everyone in the room can read. Even that coworker you’re convinced is half Hobbit can read.

Like this:

When the KGB approached Melania Trump and “encouraged” her to seduce Donald Trump so they could infiltrate American high society, she jumped at the chance. But now her life has taken a dark twist. She’s the new First Lady.

(The happy First Family)

I wonder if Trump and Melania discussed his idea to run for president or if he just came home one day with red hats, patriotic ties and a family-loaded entourage. I can hear him saying something like, “Suck it up, buttercup” when she expressed her concerns. Maybe not. Probably.

Here are the Top 5 reasons I feel pity for Melania:

She only signed on to be a trophy wife. The deal was, she got an unlimited budget, a swanky New York penthouse and she only had to have sex with Trump when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped below 10,000. Now, she has to spend time with Trump and pretend to like him for four (please, God, let it be only four) years.

Her husband treats her poorly. Trump’s actions say a TON about their marriage. I think he loves the idea of having a beautiful wife but has no idea how to treat her with respect–which seems consistent with how he treats other beautiful women.

(The Donald doesn’t even wait for her before he clumps over to the Obamas.)

She’ll be scrutinized. For the next four (please, God, let it only be four) years, every article of clothing she wears, every hairstyle she dons, every comment she makes, every somber expression she has, and every part of her schedule will be criticized, attacked, praised and Twittered. She’ll be a meme, a gif, a vime and a Facebook post.

Her husband’s lecherous behavior. I’m sure she’s aware that her husband treats women like chewing gum. But having a private conversation about Trump’s misogynistic behavior is much different than having the press have the conversation for you. No more privacy when her husband molests the pizza delivery girl.

She’ll be underestimated. Yes, Melania is beautiful, but she also speaks five languages. She’s traveled all over the world, she’s protective of her son, she’s naturally shy and tends to avoid the spotlight. I don’t think we should mistake her calm demeanor for ignorance. She might be the best thing to come out of this election.